Diaries

There seems to be a contrast of expectations that are somewhat contradictory, the aims of short-run success versus long-run program reputation

When it comes to a power program like Michigan, what evidence should be used to judge the job performance of coaches? There are the usual types of milestones and accomplishments thrown out (division titles, conference titles, BCS games). But I submit that by examining the make-up and changes in winning percentage is the main indicator in the way in which a coach should be judged. The ancillary rewards such as conference championships are rewards for wins and with a high enough winning percentages, those correlated accolades will accrue as the winning percentage increases.

The longer the sample, the less the impact of any one record from any given year would change the program success. On the other hand though, a large change from the program’s winning percentage prior the arrival of that coach to the five-years after his arrival would signal a “great coach” who could “bend the curve of a program’s trajectory”. I took the last six coaches for Michigan and looked at what the evidence shows in terms of success or failure.

If the last three years of the previous coach were poor records wise, then it is likely, the standard set of criteria for success would be, “Has this coach exceeded the results of the last coach?” For most programs, an affirmative answer to this question would result in the coach gaining the confidence of the fan/alumni base. But with Michigan (and other power programs), the next set of criteria would be, “Has the coach matched or exceeded the winning percentage of the program overall?”

When it comes to Brady Hoke, he has clearly met the first set of standards. Rich Rodriguez started from a nearly .700 winning percentage from Lloyd Carr’s tenure. He took this base and promptly shit the bed. By the empirical evidence of winning percentage, Rich Rodriguez is likely the worst coach in modern Michigan football history. The program was in better shape when Bo took over from Bump, so Hoke did not have a high bar to clear to clear the short-run collective memories of Rodriguez. In fact, Hoke’s increase in winning percentage of nearly 28 percentage points is second only to Bo, so he’s clearly a positive over Rodriguez.

The next, more macro set of standards is where the ennui with Hoke begins to set in. Examining the winning percentages on a season by season basis helps to simplify the overall trends and trajectory of a program with attempt to eliminate some of the randomness which can occur on a game to game and even season to season set of events which may limit the overall explanatory capability of the statistic. The power program and winning percentage are a gift and a curse. The gift is that the history helps with the overall great program sell and helps to perpetuate that this school has always been good therefore it will continue to be good mindset. The curse is that if the coach does not meet the historical standards set, he is considered a failure.

This presents a problem because a standard set over two different types of measurements is sure to create disappointment. In the case of Hoke, he has already met the short-run standards, which is a good thing. In his mind he can point to the crater which Rodriguez left and he has begun to fill it in and erect a new statue of success. But since this is a power program, Hoke’s success is relative. Hoke is currently less than the overall winning percentage of the program, .682 (depending on the results of the Copper Bowl) vs. about .735 (using stats from 1892 forward), this is better than the gap between the first few seasons of Bump and RichRod, but it falls short of Carr, Moeller and Bo. In fact, Hoke’s track record indicates that he is somewhat of a slow starter when it comes to his early coaching record versus the overall program’s record.

In contrast, Nick Saban, Urban Meyer and Les Miles have met or exceeded the program long-run average at nearly every stop they have been at (Saban at MSU has a similar profile to Hoke at M vis-à-vis program avg.)

The mark of a good coach is that they made their teams better. The mark of a great coach is that they made their programs better. Both Saban (LSU and Bama) and Meyer (FLA and Ohio) took decent to good programs and made them better. Miles also built upon a strong LSU program and did not regress even with the pace that Saban had set before him.

The other remarkable evidence in recent times are made up of four coaches at three power programs and one decent/good program. Pete Carroll, Jim Harbaugh, Bob Stoops and Mark Richt all set examples of blistering beginnings that M should push to emulate in the next two years.

Carroll and Stoops in particular took power programs and strengthened their long-run advantages.

Hoke’s numbers so far look more like Mack Brown and John Cooper, numbers which are underwhelming to say the least. Mack’s CEO style relies on maintaining the advantage of the program to pull in the best recruits. From Tulane to North Carolina and finally to Texas, Brown’s numbers are not earth-shattering, but they do offer a model for program consistency, if not extreme short-run success.

So, that leaves the questions which is the title to this diary, how many wins does Hoke need to keep his job (using the power program winning percentage as a central metric). Assuming that Hoke does win the Copper Bowl, to maintain the program's long-run success factor, Hoke must win 20 games in the next two seasons. This may sound unreachable sitting here today, but it could be 9 in 2014 and 11 in 2015, the distribution of the wins in a particular year does not matter, but Hoke needs those 20 wins to run his type of program.

This record assumes 10 wins evenly in both years. The power program strategy that Hoke is utilizing relies on the belief that that M is indeed a power thus attracting the recruits who want to be at said power. If that belief is lost, there could be a feedback loop whereas the loss of prestige eats away at the base which believes in that prestige and the entire program continues on this plateau of blah.

In this particular diary, we shall give the defense a similar treatment to the offense, which was dissected in a diary last week.

One thing that I will say right now, however, is that when you look at the numbers in isolation, you wouldn’t necessarily have too much to really criticize, at least not terribly harshly. There were a couple “off” performances if you will, but many good ones as well. On a yards allowed basis, per the NCAA site, Michigan would be 38thin the FBS, which is perhaps not what we would have hoped at the beginning of the season, but in my mind, being in the upper third on the list means you’re at minimum above average to good in most of the more important metrics. If nothing else, games were kept manageable.

SUMMARY DATA:

TOTAL PASSING

2736

TOTAL RUSHING

1674

TOTAL YARDS

4410

AVG. PASSING

228.00

AVG. RUSHING

139.50

AVG. YARDS

367.50

AVG. COMP. %

54.45%

AVG. YDS PER COMP.

12.80

AVG. YDS PER ATT.

6.80

AVG. YDS PER CARRY

3.76

AVG. NO. PLAYS

70

AVG. YDS PER PLAY

5.21

The above table is the summary breakdown of performance on defense. As mentioned, we were 38thoverall, but that includes being ranked 28thin rushing defense and 60thin passing defense. One thing about these numbers - and it will be discussed a little more in-depth later – is that they are also good for 33rdin pass efficiency defense.

WHAT WE ALLOWED:

This graph below is similar to one that was in the offensive summary, showing you yards per play allowed with yards per rush and yards per completion overlaid onto it. You may note the relatively close relationship between yards per play and yards per completion. I believe it ties back to the difference between pass defense and pass efficiency defense and how the two can be quite different for teams.

So, what you see here is nothing new – there were two notably subpar performances against Indiana and Ohio State. On a yards per play basis, there were some notably good performances against Central Michigan, Northwestern and Connecticut. There was a lot in between, but mainly very good work overall by the Michigan defense in limiting the success of opponents enough to keep games within reach.

The relationship between passing yards allowed and overall yards allowed will look somewhat similar. Actually, here is the normalized graph for rushing, passing and the total.

Save for the Ohio State game, they tend to trail each other. Our success on defense was very much predicated on our success stopping teams in the air.

POINTS PER PLAY AND ITS UPS AND DOWNS:

There is some debate about the overall usefulness of points per play as a metric, but I happen to think it gives a rather good 10,000-foot view of how hard you’re making a team work to score against you. Here is what that looks like for our defense this year:

The trendline doesn’t say much given the R-value, but it doesn’t tell a terrible tale overall (again, two games stand out as no so great performances). Indeed, we had eight games where this number was 0.40 or less, so we weren’t doing a bad job of making teams work to score.

PASSING EFFICIENCY:

The disparity between measuring pass defense in terms of mere yards allowed versus efficiency, which takes into consideration things like touchdown and interception percentages, has always been an interesting talking point, I think. Here is what passing yards versus passing efficiency looked like for Michigan’s defense:

Again, the trend tells a story you probably knew. Throughout the season, teams threw less, but the strikes were increasingly more surgical in their nature. The R-values are again low here, but there is a vague tendency in both cases. It could have something to do with the styles of the passing offenses we faced, but what it does say is that we were doing a good job of making opposing QBs look relatively inefficient most of the time, but when they connected, it was probably a play that stung.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS ON THE GROUND AND IN THE AIR:

The next two graphs show the relative contributions of passing and rushing to yards allowed. In summary, as the season wore on, teams began to throw a little less and run a little more in relative terms, but relating it back to the id of efficiency, it shows how much the plays that were successful meant perhaps to the outcome of the game.

Here is the frequency of rushing and passing against Michigan:

CONCLUSION:

Again, this is more or less presented without comment as many of my diaries are, but overall, the defense does deserve credit for what it managed to achieve all the same this year.

Michigan finally got what it wanted on offense. They found the big plays, stayed out of bad third downs, converted the ones they had. Unfortunately that was paired with the defense flipping the script. After being a bend but don’t break unit, they mostly broke against the Buckeyes. The 71% early conversion was the second highest number of the Big Ten season behind only the 74% Ohio State achieved against Purdue.

2. Individual Game Scores

QBs: Opp. Adjusted EV, Win percent added (National Rank)

Devin Gardner: +23.9, +91% (2)

Braxton Miller: +18.9, +63% (3)

RBs:

Derrick Green: –0.8, –3% (91)

Carlos Hyde: +7.4, +26% (3)

WRs:

Jeremy Gallon: +12.9, +32% (6)

Jake Butt: +8.0, +29% (39)

Drew Dileo: +7.4, +26% (44)

Devin Smith: +5.5, +13% (88)

Although it was painful to watch Carlos Hyde abuse the interior of the Michigan defense again, it should be noted he is having an extremely underrated season. Hyde is currently +5.4 on the season, the best season average since 2003. Reggie Bush is the only other player to crack +5 in a season and only JJ Arrington and Melvin Gordon have been +4. It is very difficult for a running back to create significant value, especially over a large number of carries, but Carlos Hyde has done it at a level not seen in the last decade.

Jeremy Gallon finished the year first among all Big Five receivers nationally at +8.5. His omission from the First team All Big Ten was appalling. Devin Funchess finished the year fourth among all players listed as tight ends and 83rd for all players with a +4.6 receiving.

Devin Gardner’s season has certainly been up and down, but he currently holds two of the top six opponent adjusted games on the season (Ohio St and Indiana) and 3 of the top 50 (including Notre Dame). If Michigan can shore up its offensive line and Gardner can protect the ball, he should be in line for a big step forward, even though this season nearly cracked the top 10 for quarterbacks.

There are three key ways I evaluate quarterbacks, EV+ which is an opponent adjusted look at how many points per game a QB is worth versus the average offensive play, WPA which is a measure of when those plays occurred and their contribution to the game result and point versus team replacement which is a measure of taking one player’s plays and replacing them with the average play that didn’t go through them. Devin Gardner was one of only two players to rank in the top 15 in all three metrics, Johnny Manziel being the second.

Devin’s EV+ for the season was +7.0, 12th in the country (Petty +12.3, Winston +10.9 and Manziel +10.4). His total win percent added was +440%, 3rd in the country (Carr +510%, Manziel +450%). His points versus team replacement was 103 points which was also third (Gilbert SMU +168, Schroeder Hawaii +127). Devin Gardner has his rough moments but there aren’t more than a handful of players this season I would trade his output for, let alone his perseverance.

3. Game Chart

Swing Plays

6. +13% Gardner to Gallon for 84 yards

5. –13% Miller to Smith for a 53 yard touchdown on 3rd and 10

4. +15% Gardner hits Jake Butt for to tie the game at 35

3. –15% Braxton Miller runs for 33 yards on the opening play of OSU’s final drive

2. +21% Gardner to Toussaint for 29 yards to set up the final touchdown

1. –35% Michigan’s two point attempt fails

4. Ron Zook Dumb Punt of the Week

Last weekend, Hawaii punted from the Army 31 and it may have been the right call. Facing a 4th and 3 with about 30 seconds left, Hawaii held onto a 7 point lead in what would end up being their first win of the season. A first down would have ended the game, but after starting 0-11, Norm Chow’s Rainbow Warriors punted away, giving Army a 95 yard field and 24 seconds to try and tie the game. Most of the time this would get a dumb punt of the week, but we’ll give Hawaii a pass after this season.

Vanderbilt trailed Wake Forest by 3 early in the second half when the Commodores faced a 4th and 3 from the Wake 38 and opted for the punt over the try. Vanderbilt went on to win and Jim Grobe stepped down after the game. It’s hard to give the dumb punt to a winning team except in the most egregious cases.

Looking west, Colorado has hit on hard times of late, but 4 wins this year is actually a step forward. This weekend they trailed Utah by 14 and faced 4th and 2 at midfield. With seven minutes to go, down 2 scores, a makeable distance, going is not that hard of a call, right? Colorado decided that they didn’t want to risk it and punted away. Three minutes later they got the ball back, still down 2 scores, at the same spot. They got best case scenario and cost themselves 3 out of 7 minutes left.

Colorado gets your Ron Zook Dumb Punt of the Week

5. The Shutout Streak

I raided Brian’s mailbag for a question:

Drew Hallett's blogpost about the non-shutout-streak mentions that Michigan is the most recent team to shutout Illinois, Indiana, MSU, Minnesota, OSU, and PSU, which is a neat stat.

I was wondering if there was any easy way to find which D1 team is the holder of "most recent shutout of the most other teams"? Seems like an interesting trivia answer to compute. Any idea?

Thanks,

Simon

Michigan’s six last shutout number is second in all of football. The fact that none of the six were against cupcakes makes it even more so. When the divisions switch next year, Michigan will have the last shutout against all four division foes from the 2013 Big Ten.

After crawling through the sports-reference.com archives, I found that the six team total is the second highest. Alabama currently holds the record with nine, tied at six against conference foes and adding three cupcakes to the total. Eight of the nine have come while Nick Saban was the coach.

For those looking in the rear view mirror in case Michigan gets shut out, the longest other active streaks in terms of dates (I didn’t bother to go to games) are:

Florida vs Auburn, 10/29/88

TCU vs Texas, 11/16/91

Air Force vs Ole Miss, 12/31/92

Ohio St vs Michigan, 11/20/93

Michigan has a full four year head start on Florida, but if both of the two teams survived this year’s offensive woes, it seems like the streak could last for a while. A few other observations:

Four teams have their last shutout in a bowl games, besides LSU in the championship game all three others were on NYE games. Watch out if Michigan ends up playing on 12/31, it’s apparently the bowl day when offense’s take the whole night off.

Behind Alabama and Michigan, Oklahoma has five last shutouts, followed by TCU, Ohio St, Nebraska and Florida St with 4.

The median shutout is Tulsa’s 45-0 loss to Oklahoma on September 19, 2009

If you are curious how recent shutouts have occurred, here is a histogram of the season of the last shutout for every team in the FBS:

1997 and 2000 were apparently really good year’s to get shut out.

6. Prediction – Big Ten Title Game Edition

Exp Pts

Conv Rate

Bonus Yards

Red Zone

OSU Off

27.0 (63/5)

81% (10/1)

185 (11/1)

5.5 (29/3)

MSU Def

22.7 (9/1)

59% (2/1)

90 (6/2)

4.0 (7/2)

MSU Off

29.4 (18/1)

70% (78/10)

113 (98/11)

4.4 (113/12)

OSU Def

22.8 (11/2)

72% (67/9)

115 (24/5)

5.3 (83/10)

As much as I don’t want to watch this game for Michigan related reasons it fascinates me for other reasons. Elite shut down defenses aren’t built with three star defenses. It’s been done on offense, but rarely on defense. Michigan State has crafted their defense into an elite offense strangulation machine. They have not played a dynamic offense like Ohio St yet this year.

While the Michigan St defense’s attempt to shutdown Braxton Miller and Carlos Hyde will be the matchup everyone will be watching, I think the game will be won on the other matchup. Ohio St’s defense is an OK unit, but the Michigan St offense still isn’t great. They are in the bottom three in the three key offensive metrics and while the Buckeyes don’t have Michigan State’s defense, they should have enough to keep things in check. I think the Spartans would need to go at least +2 in turnovers/special teams swing plays to pull this one out.

In a past diary, I charted Michigan's offensive trends over the course of the 2011-2013 seasons. In that diary, I relied on a statistic that I will call YPPdiv. This is equal to the offensive yards per play (YPP) in a given game, divided by the average YPP allowed by that team on defense. Thus, for example, Michigan averaged 7.35 YPP against Ohio State, a team that allows on average 5.01 YPP. So, 7.35 divided by 5.01 = a YPPdiv of 1.47.

Space Coyote suggested that I track the entire B1G over the course of the 2013 season to get a trendline for the entire B1G against which to compare Michigan (and each team's) offensive performance over time. Now that the regular season is over, it seemed like a good time to put the numbers together. Without further ado, here are the charts (click to embiggen):

The story: Honestly I don't know. I think that Illinois might just be bad.

The story: Indiana ripped it up early in the year but didn't have much success against Wisconsin and Ohio State. I'm not sure why, and the Crimson Quarry blog didn't seem to have any good answers, either.

The story: Iowa was pretty Iowa all year.

The story: problems with the offensive line, Devin Gardner being beaten up, complaints about the coaching. The Mathlete has proclaimed that this is the offense with the 4th highest standard deviation since 2003 (I'm not sure what stat he's using to calculate this; presumably it's PAN). But calculating the standard deviation of YPPdiv also yields a very high number for Michigan (0.33) compared to the rest of the B1G (an average of 0.21, with a high of 0.28).

The story: Michigan State found an offense this year. Their first three games were awful, but they've shown clear improvement since then. Of course, they haven't played a really good defense, either.

The story: Minnesota is Minnesota. They like to run the ball.

The story: despite the many injuries to key offensive contributors, Nebraska managed to basically hold serve offensively. They ripped up MSU in yards per play, but they turned the ball over far too much.

The story: Ohio State's offense has improved over the course of the season. Between Miller and Hyde, the Ohio State offense has pounded away at their opposition, none of whom, it should be said, has a particularly great defense.

The story: Penn State played great against Wisconsin but has been sub-par most of the year on offense.

The story: Purdue is bad, and was mostly bad throughout the year. They're consistent, at least.

The story: Wisconsin's running game is fantastic, but Stave has been inconsistent.

So. The average offensive performance by B1G teams, week by week, is as follows:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's fairly flat, with consistent performances from one week to the next.

This suggests that an offense with a slightly negative slope isn't to be expected; we should perhaps expect a fairly consistent performance from week to week. This is something that Nebraska managed despite many injuries on the offensive side of the ball. The best teams in the B1G this year -- Ohio State and Michigan State -- both showed improvement on offense over the course of the year.

The Ohio State game taught us that Michigan's problem isn't a steady decline in offensive performance, but rather wild inconsistency due to youth and playcalling.

As the first in a series of works which will summarize the season, I have decided to first focus on the thing which probably troubled people the most on this board (and how troubling will become apparent in the summary of MGoCursing); the offense.

SUMMARY DATA:

Before we get into a few more analytical graphs, here is the overall summary:

TOTAL PASSING

3025

TOTAL RUSHING

1569

TOTAL YARDS

4594

AVG. PASSING

252.08

AVG. RUSHING

130.75

AVG. YARDS

382.83

AVG. COMP. %

59.92%

AVG. YDS PER COMP.

14.04

AVG. YDS PER ATT.

8.68

AVG. YDS PER CARRY

3.06

AVG. NO. PLAYS

70

AVG. YDS PER PLAY

5.37

If you’re wondering where that leaves us in the whole of FBS teams, it is something of a mixed bag of results. If you look at the second set of numbers in the table (average passing, rushing and yards), our passing offense was 43rdin Division I, for example, and our rushing offense was 99thin Division I. Our total offense was 82nd. Our red zone offense, which you won’t see discussed in this particular work, was 51stin Division I. These rankings come from the NCAA and actually differ some with TeamRankings, but you should have an idea of where were sit approximately as an offense for the year.

YARDS PER PLAY AND ITS COMPONENTS:

Something else that has been mentioned extensively on this site is that our average offensive yards per play was not exactly impressive for most of the year. Indeed, for the Michigan State, Nebraska and Iowa games, we did not even average three yards per play. What you will see below is that our best overall performance on a yards per play basis are Indiana and Ohio State, with Akron, Central Michigan and Minnesota in the next group. On a yards per completion basis, Indiana, Minnesota and Central Michigan are the top three. On the ground, the same games in which we were having a lot of success in the air were the same ones in which we had a lot of success on the ground, so Indiana, Minnesota and Central Michigan, but Akron is on that list as well for relatively successful rushing efforts.

RUNNING, PASSING AND WHEN TO DO THESE THINGS:

In the event that you may be interested in just how much we ran the ball versus passing it, there is an answer for this question – we ran the ball 57.50% of the time and passed the ball 42.50% of the time overall. Now, the individual frequency across games was actually quite varied, as you may have assumed. Indeed, there was a stretch in the middle of the season – mainly due to turnover problems – were we did not pass more than 35% of the time. Some of our more balanced games include some epically bad rushing performances too, so finding the right mix was not an easy task this season, as the graph below shows.

EFFICIENT USE OF A LOT OF PLAYS:

Points per play is an interesting metric and seems like it is a very good indicator of overall efficiency when it comes to our time on the field versus our trips to the end zone. You’ll see how relatively unpredictable we were below, as well as how inefficient we were sometimes. Clearly, on a points per play basis, our worst performance was Michigan State – 59 offensive plays and six points makes for 0.10 points per play. Indeed, in first part of November, we were having…difficulty if this is any indication.

LONGER PASSES, BETTER RESULTS PERHAPS:

I combined yards per attempt versus completion percentage and found something I had not thought about before quite honestly. The longer our attempts, the more of them we were completing typically. That should make sense however, because as you can see in the chart below, Connecticut, Penn State and Iowa were some of the least prolific passing games and also games with some of the less memorable passing results (also rushing, in the case of Penn State).

WHERE THE SUCCESSES CAME FROM:

The next two graphs show total passing and rushing versus the percent of total yards that they represent in that game. These are interesting because they underscore just how troublesome the rushing offense was virtually all year when it comes to being a major force in the offense as a whole. Actually, for Michigan State and Nebraska, I simply input the numbers rather than say that passing was 128% of our offense at Michigan State, for example. It was not a joy to calculate this one out.

TL;DR CONCLUSION:

If you didn’t read this and instead skipped down to here, you’ll not be surprised when I say that everything above is not new information per se, but it is merely an illustration of what the struggle looked like on paper.

WELL...now that football is essentially done, it's time for us to focus on the basketball team (yes, I know, and HOCKEY). We play someone good Tuesday, I think, so that should be quite the exciting game. We also get another somewhat good team in two weeks. Man, this December schedule is BRUTAL. Anyway, if you're curious as to HOW BRUTAL or who I'm referring to, FEAR NOT! I have produced a schedule wallpaper for your information delight!